If you are planning on attending any of these sessions (including Pavel's), there are several things you can do in advance that will help not only you, but your fellow attendees.

Enable VT-x or AMD-V on your Laptop

If you will be using VirtualBox to host your workshop guest image, you need to enable the hardware virtualization feature. This is typically found in your BIOS and where you find the setting varies by laptop manufacturer. If you do not find it in the system or CPU settings, try looking in security. If you are given the choice of VT-x and VT-d, you only need to enable VT-x.

If you have a company laptop that does not allow you to change the BIOS settings, you might ask your employer if they can provide you one for the day that is not locked down.

Note: Enabling hardware virtualization is a requirement to complete the workshop.

Download and Install VirtualBox

Since this will be primarily a hands on lab, you are encouraged to bring a laptop. The labs will all be run in a Solaris guest machine, so your laptop will also need a virtualization application, such as VMware or VirtualBox. We recommend VirtualBox. You can download a free copy at VirtualBox.org. Binaries are available for Windows, MacOS, Solaris and most Linux distributions.

After installing VirtualBox, you should also install the VirtualBox Extensions Pack. These are not required for the lab, but should you continue to use the guest machine after the workshop, you might find some of the features very useful.

You can download a pre-built Solaris 11 guest image directly from the Oracle Technology Network. Here is a link to the VM download page. Accept the license and download the latest Solaris 11 VirtualBox guest image.

Once downloaded, you can use the VirtualBox VM import function to create a usable guest. Clicking File -> Import Appliance on the VirtualBox main window will launch the import wizard. Select the file you just downloaded and in a few minutes you will have a bootable Solaris 11 guest. The import process should look something like this.

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Configure the Solaris Guest

The first time you boot the Solaris 11 guest, you will be required to complete a short configuration dialog. Once you have specified all of the items on the page, press F2 to advance to the next screen.

The introduction screen looks like this.

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On the second page, specify the host name and default network setup. The default name of solaris is used throughout the lab. For the network setup, select Automatic.

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The next item in the initial system configuration is the timezone. That does not matter for the hands on labs. If you are experiencing poor weather, I have found that setting the system to Aruba time can be helpful.

The final step is to set the root password and set up the initial user. To stay consistent with the lab handouts, set the root password to oracle2011. The initial user should be specified as lab and its password should be oracle1.

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Finally, you will be presented a summary screen, which should look something like this. When satisfied, press F2 to complete.

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The Solaris 11 VM image from the Oracle Technology Network has the VirtualBox Guest Additions already installed. This enables keyboard and mouse integration as well resize/seamless windows.

Set up a Local Repository

To complete the zone installation labs in the workshop, you will need to access the Oracle public Solaris 11 repository, which means you also must have wireless network access. This does not always work well in a workshop with 30 or 40 users stressing out the local wireless access point. To make this easier, you can create your own customized package repository in your newly imported Solaris 11 guest. My colleague, Pavel Anni, has supplied this excellent set of instructions on how to do that..

1. Create a directory or a ZFS file system to hold your local repository.

4. Populate your local repository with the required packages. At present, it is not possible to do this in parallel, so the packages much be received on at a time. Depending on your network speed, this step could take 2 to 3 hours.

7. Switch repositories (disable the all existing ones and mirrors
and enable the local one):

# pkg set-publisher -G '*' -M '*' -g http://10.0.2.15/ solaris

Note that it should use your global zone's IP address (in this case, provided
automatically by VirtualBox). Then all the zones you create will keep this address
and be able to install packages from the global zone. It won't work if you set your
repository's HTTP address just to http://localhost.

About

Bob Netherton is a Principal Sales Consultant for the North American Commercial Hardware group, specializing in Solaris, Virtualization and Engineered Systems. Bob is also a contributing author of Solaris 10 Virtualization Essentials.

This blog will contain information about all three, but primarily focused on topics for Solaris system administrators.